A Woman in Residence Quotes

“Yesterday I admitted a woman as an infertility case, but when I discovered it was her husband who was sterile, I found myself reluctant to put on the chart a description of his infertility.  I suddenly realized the sexism of my own attitude.  We label women infertile all the time, yet even I find myself reluctant to so label a man for fear of what it will do to him and for fear of how others will respond to him.  We protect testicles and take out ovaries.”
― Michelle Harrison, A Woman in Residence

“Motherhood in our society means always being on the edge between two existences which rarely allow for any overlap.”
― Michelle Harrison, A Woman in Residence

“after we moved up North.   “Who’s”
― Michelle Harrison, A Woman in Residence

“wanted to leave”
― Michelle Harrison, A Woman in Residence

“I had been trying to conceive for a year and had”
― Michelle Harrison, A Woman in Residence

“women in a state of revolution.  I saw them getting up out of their beds and refusing the knife, refusing to be tied down, refusing to submit – whether they are in childbirth or when they were forty and having a hysterectomy for a uterus no longer considered useful.  Women’s health care will not improve until women reject the present system and begin instead to develop less destructive means of creating and maintaining a state of wellness.”
― Michelle Harrison, A Woman in Residence

“Medical training works like brainwashing.  Two major components are sleep deprivation and isolation from one’s support system.”
― Michelle Harrison, A Woman in Residence

“If you are sick, or even if you are having a baby, you are presumed to be incapable of intelligent judgment, and therefore – quite properly – under the control of the experts.”
― Michelle Harrison, A Woman in Residence

“What you get from that group is not support, but a lack of concern about who does what with their patients.”
― Michelle Harrison, A Woman in Residence

“Afraid to offend, lest their care be affected, they accept passivity and name it trust.”
― Michelle Harrison, A Woman in Residence

“Think of the episiotomy this way: if you hold a piece of cloth at two corners and attempt to tear it by pulling at the two ends, it will rarely rip.  However, if a small cut is made in the center, then pulling at the ends easily rips the cloth.”
― Michelle Harrison, A Woman in Residence

“There is something absurd about expecting a young male, who will never experience childbirth, to be able, after six lessons, to “coach” a woman through labor and childbirth.”
― Michelle Harrison, A Woman in Residence

“Staff and patients seemed to me to share in the mental illness, much as prison guards and inmates share a jail mentality.”
― Michelle Harrison, A Woman in Residence